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God
]] God is a term used in referring to various notions of a supreme being, often described to be the ruler or creator of the universe, or immanent within it. = A - Z = A ]] :Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work. ]] ]] * In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. ** Douglas Adams, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Chapter 1 * When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness. ** John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 January 1820) * Nearer, my God, to Thee— Nearer to Thee— E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me; Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! ** Sarah Flower Adams, Nearer, my God, to Thee! (c. 1841). An article in Notes and Queries states that the words were written by her sister, Mrs. Byrdes Flower Adams, and the music only by Sarah Flower Adams. * Never place a period where God has placed a comma. ** Gracie Allen, in her last letter to George Burns, as quoted in Two Minutes for God : Quick Fixes for the Spirit (2007) by Peter B. Panagore, p. 73; this was later used in a slogan for the United Church of Christ: Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God Is Still Speaking. * Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. ** Woody Allen, in Getting Even (1971) * If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. ** Woody Allen, in Without Feathers (1975) * The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse. ** Woody Allen, in Love and Death (1975); also quoted in What Do Jews Believe? : The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66 * To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. ** Woody Allen, in Stardust Memories (1980) * How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? ** Woody Allen, as quoted in Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50 * I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ** Susan B. Anthony, in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896) * Ordina l'uomo, e dio dispone. ** Man proposes, and God disposes. ** Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516), Chapter XLVI. 35. * If you comprehend, it is not God. **Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 52, 16 * Deus scitur melius nesciendo. ** God is best known in not knowing him. ** Augustine of Hippo, De Ordine, II, 16. * A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe. ** Sri Aurobindo, in Thoughts and Aphorisms * God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints. ** Avicenna, as quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer B * I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God would have existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. ** Mikhail Bakunin in "On God and the State" * God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there. ** J. G. Ballard, as quoted in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/06/fiction.jgballard "The benign catastrophist" by Susie Mackenzie in The Guardian (6 September 2003)] * The glory of God is not contingent on man's good will, but all existence subserves his purposes. The system of the universe is as a celestial poem, whose beauty is from all eternity, and must not be marred by human interpolations. Things proceed as they were ordered, in their nice, and well-adjusted, and perfect harmony; so that as the hand of the skilful artist gathers music from the harp-strings, history calls it forth from the well-tuned chords of time. Not that this harmony can be heard during the tumult of action. Philosophy comes after events, and gives the reason of them, and describes the nature of their results. The great mind of collective man may, one day, so improve in self-consciousness as to interpret the present and foretell the future; but as yet, the end of what is now happening, though we ourselves partake in it, seems to fall out by chance. All is nevertheless one whole; individuals, families, peoples, the race, march in accord with the Divine will; and when any part of the destiny of humanity is fulfilled, we see the ways of Providence vindicated. The antagonisms of imperfect matter and the perfect idea, of liberty and necessary law, become reconciled. What seemed irrational confusion, appears as the web woven by light, liberty and love. But this is not perceived till a great act in the drama of life is finished. The prayer of the patriarch, when he desired to behold the Divinity face to face, was denied; but he was able to catch a glimpse of Jehovah, after He had passed by; and so it fares with our search for Him in the wrestlings of the world. It is when the hour of conflict is over, that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim: "Lo! God is here, and we knew it not." ' ** George Bancroft ''Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), p. 491 * If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. ** Samuel Beckett, on the title of one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, as quoted in The Essential Samuel Beckett : An Illustrated Biography, by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003), p.75 * '''Zeus, n''. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names. ** Ambrose Bierce, in ''The Cynic's Word Book (1906), later retitled The Devil's Dictionary * Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives. Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god. ** Giannina Braschi in "Empire of Dreams" * That we devote ourselves to God is seen In living just as though no God there were. ** Robert Browning, Paracelsus (1835), Part I. * God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations. ** Robert Browning, Paracelsus (1835), Part II. * God's in His Heaven — All's right with the world! ** Robert Browning, Pippa Passes (1841), Part I. * All service is the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first. ** Robert Browning, Pippa Passes (1841), Part IV. * All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him. ** Martin Buber, in I and Thou (1923) * Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others. ** Martin Buber, in I and Thou (1923) * God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion. ** Samuel Butler "Rebelliousness" in Note-Books (1912) * There is no god but God! — to prayer — lo! God is great! ** Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 59, this is a translation of standard Islamic exclamations. C * Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ** Jimmy Carter in Living Faith (2001), p. 222 * God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays. ** Emile Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born * God never meant that man should scale the Heavens By strides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wondrous, he commands us in his word To seek him rather where his mercy shines. ** William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book III, line 217. * But who with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, My Father made them all. ** William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V. The Winter Morning Walk, line 745. * Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste His works. Admitted once to his embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart Made pure shall relish with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought. ** William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, line 782. D * A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself. ** Robertson Davies in Conversations * The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. ** Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion ]] * They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. ** Emily Dickinson Letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland L551 (Spring 1878) * It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — All things swept sole away This — is immensity — ** Emily Dickinson Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson L551 (1881) * If there is a supreme being, he's crazy. ** Marlene Dietrich, as quoted in Rave magazine (November 1986) * God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. ** Paul Dirac, as quoted in The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics As The Language Of Nature (1982) by Heinz R. Pagels, p. 295; also in Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac : Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990) edited by Behram N. Kursunoglu and Eugene Paul Wigner, p. xv E * If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible. ** Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" * I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him. ** Albert Einstein, letter to Edgar Meyer (2 January 1915) * It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. ** Albert Einstein from a letter to an atheist, written in English (24 March 1954). It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman * My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment. ** Albert Einstein, letter to M. Berkowitz (25 October 1950) * God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. ** Exodus 3:14 (King James Version) ** Variant: God said to Moses, 'I will be what I will be' F * If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. ** "God" in Futurama G ]] ]] * I looked and looked but I didn't see God. ** Attributed to Yuri Gagarin after becoming the first person to orbit the Earth, as quoted in To Rise from Earth (1996) by Wayne Lee; the authenticity of this remark is disputed; Colonel Valentin Petrov stated in 2006 that the cosmonaut never said such words, and that the quote originated from Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign, saying "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there." ** Sometimes misquoted as "I see no God up here" as if he said this in space, but there are no transcripts or recordings indicating that he ever did. * I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. ** Galileo Galilei. in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), an essay published in 1615, in response to enquiries of Christina of Tuscany, as quoted in Aspects of Western Civilization : Problems and Sources in History (1988) by Perry McAdow Rogers, p. 53 ** Variant translation: I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them. * Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe. ** Attributed to Galileo Galilei in Statistics: Concepts and Applications (1994) by Harry Frank and Steven C. Althoen, p. xxi * It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith. ** Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Young India (24 September 1931); also in [http://www.archive.org/details/teachingsofmahat029222mbp Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 458] * People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing. ** Ernest Gellner, in Legitimation of Belief (1974), p. 99 * I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. ** Geronimo, as quoted in Geronimo's Story of His Life (1907) as told to S.M. Barrett in 1905 and 1906, "Usen" is the Apache word for God. * Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs. ** Stephen Jay Gould, in "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge" in Scientific American (July 1992) H * Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving. ** Reverend John Hall, reported in Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 194. * Futurist Aldo Palazzeschi... exhorts us in L'antidolore (1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace. ** [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3806/is_200605/ai_n17220907/print Thomas Harrison, in "Laughter and the Tree Of Knowledge" in the Romanic Review (May-November 2006)] * I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe. ** "Jubal Harshaw", in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein'' * How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation? ** Joseph Heller, Catch 22 * Restore to God His due in tithe and time; A tithe purloin'd cankers the whole estate. ** George Herbert, The Temple (1633), The Church Porch, Stanza 65. * Consciousness is Gods' gift to mankind. ** Dr. Albert Hofmann discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006) * God only speaks to those who understand the language ** Dr. Albert Hofmann discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006) I * Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man. ** Robert Ingersoll (14 October 1879) * God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don’t feel so well myself. ** Eugène Ionesco, as quoted in Jewish American Literature : A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318 * I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create calamity: I the LORD do all these things. ** Isaiah 45:5-7 (King James Version) ** Variant: I am the Lord and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates calamity; I am the Lord, who makes all these. J * The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. ** Thomas Jefferson, Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) * It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ** Thomas Jefferson, Query 17 in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785) * Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. ** Thomas Jefferson, Query 18 in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785) * Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. ** Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France, (10 August 1787). * No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. ** Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Smith (1822) * The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. : 1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect. : 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments. : 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion. ::* Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, (26 June 1822) * You cannot serve both God and Mammon. **Jesus, in Matthew 6:24 * Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings in a previous creation He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature. ** Jinasena (9th Century) in the Mahāpurāna, as translated in Primal Myths (1979) by Barbara Sproul * The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence. ** John of the Cross in The Sayings of Light and Love as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991) *God is a dark night to man in this life. ** St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, I, 2, 1 * For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life ** John 3:16 K * God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live. ** Desperation, by Stephen King * God said take what you want...and pay for it. ** "Johnny Marinville" in Desperation, by Stephen King L * It isn't always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult's god, and therefore he did not believe in God. ** Madeleine L'Engle in The Crosswicks Journal, Book One : A Circle of Quiet (1972) * Homo proponit et Deus disponit. ** And governeth alle goode virtues. ** William Langland, Vision of Piers Ploughman (Ed. 1824), Volume II, p. 427, line 13,984. John Gerson is credited with same. Saying quoted in Chronicles of Battel Abbey (1066 to 1177). Translation by Lower, 1851, p. 27. Homer, Iliad, XVII. 515. Pindar, Olymp, XIII. 149. Demosthenes, De Corona., 209. Plautus, Bacchid. I, 2, 36. Ammianus Marcellinus, Hist, XXV. 3. Francois Fenelon, Sermon on the Epiphany, 1685. Montaigne, Essay, Book II, Chapter XXXVII. Seneca, Epistles, 107. Cleanthus, Fragment. Cervantes, Don Quixote, I. 22. Dante, Paradise, VIII, line 134. Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein's Death, I, 7. 32. Ordericus Vitalis, Ecclesiastica Historia, Book III (1075). * God is only a great imaginative experience. ** D.H. Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence (1936) pt. 4, edited by E. McDonald * God is a concept by which we measure our pain. ** John Lennon, God (1970) * Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd? ** Joseph Lewis, The Philosophy of Atheism * An' you've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God. ** James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers (1848), First Series. No. 1, Stanza 5. M is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. ~ Thomas Merton ]] * What in me is dark, Illumine; what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. ** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book I, line 22. * These are thy glorious works, Parent of good. ** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, line 153. * Bright and clear mind — that we call God. ** Namboku Mizuno, Food Governs Your Destiny, p. 103 * God is living in people's hearts, and in God there is no distinction or rank. Therefore God lives in everyone. That's why traditionally it is said that all deities are the same. They say God comes to a person who is very humble and honest. ** Namboku Mizuno, Food Governs Your Destiny, p. 105 * If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause. ** Joseph McCabe in A History of Torture. * Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. ** H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, ch. 30 (1949) * God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters. ** H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956) * To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. ** Thomas Merton, in Seeds of Contemplation (1949) * Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action. ** Thomas Merton, in a letter to Dorothy Day (20 December 19 * O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen. ** Thomas Merton, in his closing prayer to an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1975); quoted in Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings (1992), p. 237 * There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided. ** Charles de Montesquieu, Lettres persannes. * One thing I can't stand, it's people groveling. ** God, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail * If there is anything so precious that without it history and the world will be destroyed, where will you keep it? You will naturally want to keep it in the deepest part of your mind. If you desire to place it in the depths of your mind, it needs to be invisible. It is for this very reason that God exists as an invisible being. It is fortunate that He is invisible, for if He were visible how could a great contest to gain Him be avoided? It would be difficult for God to endure the pain of seeing it. ** Sun Myung Moon, [http://www.unification.net/wogw/wogw1-01.html The Way of God's Will Chapter 1-1. The Will of God] Translated 1980. * God is not stupid. ** Sun Myung Moon, [http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw1-05.htm The Way of God's Will Chapter 1-5. Tradition, Official Business, and Responsibility] Translated 1980. N ]] ]] ]] * This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler. ** Isaac Newton, in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) * All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation. ** Isaac Newton, in Opticks, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light, 4th edition (1730) * A Heavenly Master governs all the world as Sovereign of the universe. We are astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down before Him because of His unlimited power. From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God. ** Isaac Newton, as quoted in Our Humanist Heritage (2010) by George Frater, p. 75 * God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight. ** Friedrich Nietzsche, "Upon the Blessed Isles", Thus Spoke Zarathustra * God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. ** Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Gay Science (1882), section 125 ** The reduction of Nietzsche's thought to … the first-liner of a graffito sometimes found in certain modern tiled cells and catacombs: :: God is dead — Nietzsche Nietzsche is dead — God : This reduction could appear to be the creative interpretation of masterful will to power — if Nietzsche's thought and style are as uncontrolled as the critics suggest. … Nietzsche himself anticipates the strife of revengeful graffiti at the conclusion of his text: "Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them — I can write in letters which make even the blind see." …Nietzsche says in his preface that his readers must have a "predestination for the labyrinth" and "new ears for new music" if they are to understand this difficult writing. :* Gary Shapiro in Nietzschean Narratives (1989), p. 126 * I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ** Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted in 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1995) edited by Evan Esar, p. 347 * God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm. ** "Bruce Nolan" in Bruce Almighty (2003) O P ]] ]] * Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory. **Louis Pasteur, as quoted in The Literary Digest (18 October 1902) * Science brings men nearer to God. **Louis Pasteur, as quoted in Letter to an Atheist (2007) by Michael Patrick Leahy, p. 61 * It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. ** General George S. Patton, Jr., in a speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in Patton : Ordeal and Triumph (1970) by Ladislas Farago * For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse. ** Paul of Tarsus in Romans 1:20 (ASV) * What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just. ** Paul of Tarsus in :3-8 * We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. ** Paul of Tarsus, in Romans 3:19-31 * God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ** John the Apostle in 1 John 1:5 * God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. ** John the Apostle in 1 John 4:16 * All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter. ** Max Planck, as he accepted the Nobel Prize (1919) * Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 15. * Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 99. * To Him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all! ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 277. * He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle II, line 110. * Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 331. * I don't have much truck with the "religion is the cause of most of our wars" school of thought because that is manifestly done by mad, manipulative and power-hungry men who cloak their ambition in God. I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet. ** Terry Pratchett, in [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1028222/I-create-gods-time--I-think-exist.html "I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett" in The Daily Mail (21 June 2008)] * I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from. ** Terry Pratchett, in "I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett" in The Daily Mail (21 June 2008) * God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 'Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. ** ''Psalms 46:1 - 3 * There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. ** Psalms 46:4 - 7 * Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. '''Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. ** Psalms 46:8 - 10 * The fool says in his heart "There is no God". ** Psalms 53:1 *Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this super-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is. ** Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, 1, 1 Q * God! There is no god but He, — the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there that can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? he knoweth what before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme. ** Qur'an R ]] ]] * The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. ** John Ray, title of a book (1691) * God is an iron. ** Spider Robinson, in "God is an Iron" (1977). The title is a pun based on the proposition that if a person who commits a felony is a felon, then a person who creates irony is an iron. * Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God. ** Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist (1939) * If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts. ** Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science S ]] * I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts. ** Marquis de Sade, Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787) quote is strikingly similar to Epicurus' above. * The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection,creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell. ** Armand Salacrou in Ceritudes et incertitudes (1943) * Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him. ** Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words (1964) * We are all writing God's poem. ** Anne Sexton, as quoted by Erica Jong, in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/26/features11.g2 "Into the lion's den" in The Guardian (26 October 2000)] * God is our fortress, in whose conquering name Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks. ** William Shakespeare, ''Henry VI'', Part II (c. 1590-91), Act II, scene 1, line 26. * God shall be my hope, My stay, my guide and lantern to my feet. ** William Shakespeare, ''Henry VI'', Part II (c. 1590-91), Act II, scene 3, line 24. * And to add greater honours to his age Than man could give him, he died fearing God. ** William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (1613), Act IV, scene 2, line 67. * If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? ** Percy Bysshe Shelley, in The Necessity of Atheism (1811) * By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite — that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality. Explanation — I say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind: for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation. ** Baruch Spinoza, in [[s:Ethics (Spinoza)|''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' [Ethics Geometrically Demonstrtated] (1677)]], Definition 6 * Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived. ** Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), Prop. 15 * God and all attributes of God are eternal. ** Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), Prop. 19 ** Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. ** Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), Prop. 25 * God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. ** Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677) * Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. ** Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677) T ]] ]] , is Love in all he doeth, Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume... ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper ]] * Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. ** Rabindranath Tagore, in Stray Birds (1916); paraphrased variant: Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity. * What, but God? Inspiring God! who boundless Spirit all, And unremitting Energy, pervades, Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole. ** James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 849. * Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. ** Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace Bk XIII, Chapter 16 * The Kingdom of God is within you... and all beings. ** Leo Tolstoy * The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us. ** Leo Tolstoy in The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894) Ch. 12 * God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. ** Leo Tolstoy in his diary (1 November 1910) * I am what you call "The World". Or perhaps "The Universe". Or perhaps "God". Or perhaps "Truth". Or perhaps "Everything". Or perhaps "One". And, I am "You". ** Truth Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood * God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love in all he doeth, Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume: The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it: The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever. ** Martin Farquhar Tupper, in "Of Immortality" in Proverbial Philosophy (1849) U V * I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. ** Voltaire, in a letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767) * If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. ** Voltaire in Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (10 November 1770) * "If God did not exist, He would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it. ** Voltaire quoting himself in a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), as quoted in Voltaire in His Letters (1919) by S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall) * I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. ** Voltaire, as quoted in More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65 * Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself. ** Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in The Sirens of Titan (1959) W ]] ," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. ~ Robert Anton Wilson ]] ]] * Don't you know there ain't no devil? There's only God when He's drunk. **Tom Waits, in "Heartattack and Vine" on Heartattack and Vine (1980) * God's greatness and goodness are measured by the fact that he gives us choices. He doesn't require us to thank him for our food. (In case you hadn't noticed.) God is not a Modernist. He doesn't view us as nails. God expects us to behave like carpenters. Indeed, he gave us a carpenter as an example. So I think God is postmodern. He has his own ideas of what rules, and what sucks, and he doesn't expect everyone else to agree with him. ** Larry Wall in "Perl, the first postmodern computer language" (9 March 1999) * One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism. ** Simone Weil, in Last Notebook (1942) * In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. ** Simone Weil, in Last Notebook (1942) * No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters. ** Simone Weil, in Last Notebook (1942) * There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God. ** Simone Weil, as quoted in The New Christianity (1967) edited by William Robert Miller * No man — prince, peasant, pope, — has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness. It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!" ** Morris West, in his play about Giordano Bruno, 'The Heretic'' (1968) * Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! '''We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside! ** Morris West, in The Heretic (1968) * If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth. ** Morris West, in The Heretic (1968) * Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things. You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage. ** Morris West, in The Clowns of God (1981) * No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality. ** Alfred North Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World (1925) * All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent. ** Tennessee Williams, in The Night of the Iguana (1963) *''' "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention.' The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. ** Robert Anton Wilson, in ''Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups (1998), p. 197 * I believe in God, only I spell it "Nature". ** Frank Lloyd Wright, in Quote magazine (14 August 1966) * God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing. ** Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted in Truth Against the World : Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture (1987) edited by Patrick J. Meehan X Y * A God all mercy is a God unjust. ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 234. * By night an atheist half believes in God. ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night V, line 177. * A Deity believed, is joy begun; A Deity adored, is joy advanced; A Deity beloved, is joy matured. Each branch of piety delight inspires. ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 720. * A God alone can comprehend a God. ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night LX, line 835. * Thou, my all! My theme! my inspiration! and my crown! My strength in age—my rise in low estate! My souls ambition, pleasure, wealth!—my world! My light in darkness! and my life in death! My boast through time! bliss through eternity! Eternity, too short to speak thy praise! Or fathom thy profound of love to man! ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 586. Z * Arthur Frayn: "And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?" ** Zardoz (1974) ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' :Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 315-21. * Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. ** Acts, XVII. 23. * Homo cogitat, Deus indicat. ** Man thinks, God directs. ** Alcuin, Epistles. * At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose. ** Anacharsis. * Man says—"So, so." Heaven says—"No, no." ** Chinese Aphorism. * God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!—Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!—what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore. ** Matthew Arnold, The Divinity, Stanza 3. * They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. ** Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Atheism. * From thee all human actions take their springs, The rise of empires, and the fall of kings. ** Samuel Boyse, ''The Deity. * O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water which once gushed out of thy side … bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul. ** Brevint, Works (Ed. 1679), p. 17. * He made little, too little of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood thus full in the torrent of the sunshine. ** Phillips Brooks, Sermons, The Seriousness of Life. * It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened. ** Phillips Brooks, Sermons, The Seriousness of Life. * Of what I call God, And fools call Nature. ** Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, The Pope, line 1,073. * A picket frozen on duty— A mother starved for her brood— Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood; And millions who, humble and nameless, The straight, hard pathway trod— Some call it Consecration, And others call it God. ** W. H. Carruth, Evolution. * Nihil est quod deus efficere non possit. ** There is nothing which God cannot do. ** Cicero, De Divinatione, II. 41. * God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! ** Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni. * God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. ** I Corinthians. I. 27. * I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. ** I Corinthians, III. 6. * God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm. ** William Cowper, Hymn, Light Shining out of Darkness. * There is a God! the sky his presence shares, His hand upheaves the billows in their mirth, Destroys the mighty, yet the humble spares And with contentment crowns the thought of worth. ** Charlotte Cushman, There is a God. * My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in the end. ** Wentworth Dillon, translation of Dies Iræ. * 'Twas much, that man was made like God before: But, that God should be made like man, much more. ** John Donne, Holy Sonnets, Sonnet XXII. * By tracing Heaven his footsteps may be found: Behold! how awfully he walks the round! God is abroad, and wondrous in his ways The rise of empires, and their fall surveys. ** John Dryden, Britannia Rediviva, line 75. * Too wise to err, too good to be unkind,— Are all the movements of the Eternal Mind. ** Rev. John East, Songs of My Pilgrimage. * God is divine Principle, supreme incorporeal Being, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Life, Truth, Love. ** Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, Chapter XIV. Ed. 1906, p. 465. * There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. Spirit is immortal Truth; Matter is mortal error. ** Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, Chapter XIV. Ed. 1906, p. 468. * When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims (1876), Immortality. * He was a wise man who originated the idea of God. ** Euripides, Sisyphus. * Henceforth the Majesty of God revere; Fear him and you have nothing else to fear. ** Fordyce, Answer to a Gentleman who Apologized to the Author for Swearing. * Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott, Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott. ** As a man is, so is his God; therefore God was so often an object of mockery. ** Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gedichte. * I know My God commands, whose power no power resists. ** Robert Greene, Looking-Glass for London and England. * Some men treat the God of their fathers as they treat their father's friend. They do not deny him; by no means: they only deny themselves to him, when he is good enough to call upon them. ** J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth. * I askt the seas and all the deeps below My God to know, I askt the reptiles, and whatever is In the abyss; Even from the shrimps to the leviathan Enquiry ran; But in those deserts that no line can sound The God I sought for was not to be found. ** Thomas Heywood, Searching after God. * Forgetful youth! but know, the Power above With ease can save each object of his love; Wide as his will, extends his boundless grace. ** Homer, The Odyssey, Book III, line 285. Pope's translation. * O thou, whose certain eye foresees The fix'd event of fate's remote decrees. ** Homer, The Odyssey, Book IV, line 627. Pope's translation. * Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach. ** Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I, Chapter II. 3. * Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the heavens of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretch'd from sky to sky. ** Rabbi Mayir ben Isaac. Translation of Chaldee Ode, sung in Jewish Synagogues during the service of the first day of the Feast of the Pentecost. Given in the original Chaldee in Notes and Queries, Dec. 31, 1853, p. 648. In Grose's Olio, p. 292, and in Book of Jewish Thoughts, p. 155. Same idea in Chaucer—Balade Warnynge Men to Beware of Deceitful Women. Also in Remedie of Love. See Modern Universal History, p. 430. Note. Miss C. Sinclair—Hill and Valley, p. 35. (Same idea.) Smart given as English translator by one authority. See also Des Knaben Wunderhorn. * But if the sky were paper and a scribe each star above, And every scribe had seven hands, they could not write all my love. ** Dürsli und Bäbeli; old public house ditty of the Canton de Soleure or Solothurn. Original in Swiss dialect. Given in Notes and Queries (Feb. 10, 1872), p. 114. * From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,— Path, motive, guide, original, and end. ** Samuel Johnson, Motto to The Rambler, No. 7. * The sun and every vassal star, All space, beyond the soar of angel's wings, Wait on His word: and yet He stays His car For every sigh a contrite suppliant brings. ** John Keble, The Christian Year, Ascension Day. * Nam homo proponit, sed Deus disponit. ** Man proposes, but God disposes. ** Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter XIX. Thomas Dibdin's translation. * O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee. ** Johannes Kepler, when studying astronomy. * All but God is changing day by day. ** Charles Kingsley, The Saints' Tragedy, Prometheus. * God! there is no God but he, the living, the self-subsisting. ** Koran, Chapter II, Part III. * There is no god but God. ** Koran, Chapter III. * L'impossibilité où je suis de prouver que Dieu n'est pas, me decouvre son existence. ** The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence. ** Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, XVI. * Sire, je n'avais besoin de cet hypothèse. ** Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis. ** La Place to Napoleon, who asked why God was not mentioned in Traite de la Méchanique Céleste. * Denn Gott lohnt Gutes, hier gethan, auch hier noch. ** For God rewards good deeds done here below—rewards them here. ** Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise, I, 2. * "We trust, Sir, that God is on our side." "It is more important to know that we are on God's side." ** Abraham Lincoln, reply to deputation of Southerners during Civil War. * God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish, IV. * Estne dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aër Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra? Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris. ** Is there any other seat of the Divinity than the earth, sea, air, the heavens, and virtuous minds? why do we seek God elsewhere? He is whatever you see; he is wherever you move. ** Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, IX. 578. * Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott Ein gute Wehr und Waffen, Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not, Die uns jetzt hat betroffen. ** A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing, Our helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing. ** Martin Luther, Ein feste Burg. Translation by F. H. Hedge. * I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. ** Henry Francis Lyte, Eventide. * A voice in the wind I do not know; A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God. ** George MacDonald, Within and Without, Part I, scene 1. * Exemplumque dei quisque est in imagine parva. ** Every one is in a small way the image of God. ** Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, IV. 895. * Quis cœlum possit nisi cœli munera nosse? Et reperire deum nisi qui pars ipse deorum est? ** Who can know heaven except by its gifts? and who can find out God, unless the man who is himself an emanation from God? ** Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, II. 115. * The Lord who gave us Earth and Heaven Takes that as thanks for all He's given. The book he lent is given back All blotted red and smutted black. ** John Masefield, Everlasting Mercy, Stanza 27. * One sole God; One sole ruler,—his Law; One sole interpreter of that law—Humanity. ** Giuseppe Mazzini, Life and Writings, Young Europe, General Principles, No. 1. * Too wise to be mistaken still Too good to be unkind. ** Samuel Medley, Hymn of God. * Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest. ** John Milton, Sonnet, On His Blindness. * Gott-trunkener Mensch. ** A God-intoxicated man. ** Novalis (of Spinoza). * Trumpeter, sound for the splendour of God! . . . . . . Trumpeter, rally us, up to the heights of it! Sound for the City of God. ** Alfred Noyes, Trumpet Call, last lines. * Est deus in nobis; et sunt commercia cœli. ** There is a God within us and intercourse with heaven. ** Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book III. 549. (Milton's "Looks commercing with the skies" said to be inspired by this phrase.) * Est deus in nobis: agitante calescimus illo. ** There is a God within us, and we glow when he stirs us. ** Ovid, Fasti, Book VI. 6. * Sed tamen ut fuso taurorum sanguine centum, Sic capitur minimo thuris honore deux. ** As God is propitiated by the blood of a hundred bulls, so also is he by the smallest offering of incense. ** Ovid, Tristium, II. 75. * Nihil ita sublime est, supraque pericula tendit Non sit ut inferius suppositumque deo. ** Nothing is so high and above all danger that is not below and in the power of God. ** Ovid, Tristium, IV. 8. 47. * Fear God. Honour the King. ** I Peter, II. 17. * One on God's side is a majority. ** Wendell Phillips, speech at Harper's Ferry (Nov. 1, 1859). * God is truth and light his shadow. ** Plato. * God is a geometrician. ** Attributed to Plato, but not found in his works. * Est profecto deus, qui, quæ nos gerimus, auditque et videt. ** There is indeed a God that hears and sees whate'er we do. ** Plautus, Captivi, II. 2. 63. * He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, And on the sightless eyeball pour the day. ** Alexander Pope, Messiah. * Thou Great First Cause, least understood. ** Alexander Pope, Universal Prayer. * The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. ** Psalms, XIX. 1. * He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. ** Psalms, XXIII. 2. * God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. ** Psalms. XLVI. 1. * Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai point d'autre crainte. ** I fear God, dear Abner, and I have no other fear. ** Jean Racine, Athalie, Act I, scene 1. * There is no respect of persons with God. ** Romans, II. 11. Acts X. 34. * Fear of God before their eyes. ** Romans, III. 18. * If God be for us, who can be against us? ** Romans, VIII. 31. * Give us a God—a living God, One to wake the sleeping soul, One to cleanse the tainted blood Whose pulses in our bosoms roll. ** C. G. Rosenberg, The Winged Horn, Stanza 7. * We may scavenge the dross of the nation, we may shudder past bloody sod, But we thrill to the new revelation that we are parts of God. ** Robert Haven Schauffler, New Gods for Old. * Es lebt ein Gott zu strafen und zu rächen. ** There is a God to punish and avenge. ** Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, IV. 3. 37. * Nihil ab illo a Deo vacat; opus suum ipse implet. ** Nothing is void of God; He Himself fills His work. ** Seneca, De Beneficiis, IV. 8. * Deum non immolationibus et sanguine multo colendum: quæ enim ex trucidatione immerentium voluptas est? sed mente pura, bono honestoque proposito. Non templa illi, congestis in altitudinem saxis, struenda sunt; in suo cuique consecrandus est pectore. ** God is not to be worshipped with sacrifices and blood; for what pleasure can He have in the slaughter of the innocent? but with a pure mind, a good and honest purpose. Temples are not to be built for Him with stones piled on high; God is to be consecrated in the breast of each. ** Seneca, Fragment, V. 204. * God helps those who help themselves. ** Algernon Sidney, Discourse Concerning Government, Chapter II. Ovid—Metamorphoses. X. 586. Pliny the Elder, viewing the Eruption of Vesuvius, Aug., 79. Friedrich Schiller, William Tell, I. 2. Simonides is quoted as author by Claudian. Sophocles, Fragments. Terence, Phormio. I. 4. Vergil, Æneid (29-19 BC), X, 284. Quoted as a proverb by old and modern writers. * From Piety, whose soul sincere Fears God, and knows no other fear. ** W. Smyth, Ode for the Installation of the Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor of Cambridge. * Ad majorem Dei gloriam. ** For the greater glory of God. ** Motto of the Society of Jesus. * The divine essence itself is love and wisdom. ** Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom, Par. 28. * God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane. ** Rabindranath Tagore, Jivan-smitri. * Ha sotto i piedi il Fato e la Natura. Ministri umili; e'l moto e chi'l misura. ** Under whose feet (subjected to His grace), Sit nature, fortune, motion, time, and place. ** Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme, IX, 66. * At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" To which an answer pealed from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn, God made himself an awful rose of dawn. ** Alfred Tennyson, Vision of Sin, V. * I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. ** Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven. * But I lose Myself in Him, in Light ineffable! Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise. These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling Year Is full of Thee. ** James Thomson, Hymn, line 116. * The being of God is so comfortable, so convenient, so necessary to the felicity of Mankind, that, (as Tully admirably says) Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur, if God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost seem to be made on purpose for the use and benefit of men. ** Archbishop Tillotson, Works, Sermon 93, Volume I, p. 696. (Ed. 1712). Probable origin of Voltaire's phrase. * Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee. ** Augustus Toplady, Living and Dying Prayer. "Rock of Ages" is translation. from the Hebrew of "everlasting strength." Isaiah, XXVI. 4. * None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it. ** Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Parables, Prodigal Son. * God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love. ** Martin Farquhar Tupper, Of Immortality. * I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no. ** "The Unbeliever's Creed", Connoisseur No. IX (March 28, 1754). * Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma, At sperate deos memores fandi atque nefandi. ** If ye despise the human race, and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong. ** Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 542. * Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. ** If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. ** Voltaire, Epitre à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs, CXI. See Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Volume I, p. 1076. Ed. Didot, 1827. Also in letter to Frederick, Prince Royal of Prussia. * Je voudrais que vous écrasassiez l'infâme. ** I wish that you would crush this infamy. ** Voltaire to D'Alembert June 23, 1760. Attributed to Voltaire by Abbé Barruch—Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. Generally quoted "Écrasez l'infâme." A. De Morgan contends that the popular idea that it refers to God is incorrect. It refers probably to the Roman Catholic Church, or the traditions in the church. * God on His throne is eldest of poets: Unto His measures moveth the Whole. ** William Watson, England my Mother, Part II. * The God I know of, I shall ne'er Know, though he dwells exceeding nigh. Raise thou the stone and find me there, Cleave thou the wood and there am I. Yea, in my flesh his spirit doth flow, Too near, too far, for me to know. ** William Watson, The Unknown God. Third and fourth lines are from "newly discovered sayings of Jesus." Probably an ancient Oriental proverb. * The Somewhat which we name but cannot know. Ev'n as we name a star and only see Its quenchless flashings forth, which ever show And ever hide him, and which are not he. ** William Watson, Wordsworth's Grave, I, Stanza 6. * God is and all is well. ** John Greenleaf Whittier, My Birthday. * I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. ** John Greenleaf Whittier, The Eternal Goodness, Stanza 20. * Though man sits still, and takes his ease, God is at work on man; No means, no moment unemploy'd, To bless him, if he can. ** Edward Young, Resignation, Part I, Stanza 119. = Anonymous = :Proverbs or widely known statements by unknown authors. * The more science I come to understand, The more logic, reason and math I learn, The more I believe in God, for the complexity and depth of nature and cosmos, on its small and grand scales, I find it quite impossible by the same reasons, logic, and equations, for it to have come about merely on its own without any divine intervention. **Anonymous * Call on God, but row away from the rocks. ** English proverb * God does not love those who have not suffered. ** Croatian Proverb * God is like a barber: don't expect him to give you a haircut, you must first get at his barbershop. ** Anonymous * God is beatiful. He loves beauty. ** Muslim proverb * Trust in God but tie your camel. ** Muslim proverb (possibly attributed in the Masnavi of Rumi). * If God lived on earth, people would break his windows. ** Yiddish proverb * To make God laugh at you, tell him your plans. ** Yiddish proverb * Black holes are where God is dividing by zero. ** Anonymous * God is real, unless you declare him an integer. ** Anonymous * Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light. ** Anonymous, "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song, recorded by many artists. * Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down. ** Anonymous "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song =See also= *Life *Death *Atheism *Religion *Jesus Christ =External links= *What is God by Vladimir Antonov *Who is God? *Why Won't God Heal Amputees? Category:Religion ml:ദൈവം bg:Бог bs:Bog ca:Déu cs:Bůh de:Gott et:Jumal el:Θεός es:Dios eo:Dio eu:Jainkoa fr:Dieu hr:Bog is:Guð it:Dio he:אלוהים ku:Yezdan lt:Dievas hu:Isten ja:神 uz:Xudo pl:Bóg pt:Deus ru:Бог sk:Boh sl:Bog sr:Бог tr:Tanrı uk:Бог zh:神